Memorial Created In "Vitsebsk Kurapaty"

Activists have mounted on crosses in the tract near the village of Khaisy in Vitsebsk region.

Activists of the initiative group Khaisy mounted on three large metal crosses in the tract near the village of Khaisy in Vitsebsk region – on the site, where the mass graves of people had been found. This place is popularly styled as Vitsebsk Kurapaty, tut.by writes.

We remind that in November 2014, people found more than 40 upturned pits with human remains near the road P-115 in the forest near the villages of Drakoliye and Khaisy. Most of the skulls had holes in the back part, most likely bullet ones. Old-timers say that people were shot there in 1938-1939. In 2016, the remains were reburied in a mass grave near the railway station Luzhesna. But not as victims of Stalinist repression – as victims of the Great Patriotic War.

In the spring of 2017, bones and skulls with holes in the back of the head (presumably from bullets) were found a in another part of the forest near Khaisy, about 300-400 meters from the burials found in 2014. 7 large pits and about 10 small ones were found by a local resident.

There were different objects – glasses, buttons, combs, rubber shoes, utensils, etc. next to the remains., The production year – most often 1937 – was seen on some of them. A lot of bullets were found in the graves, they were dozens of them.

Specialists of the 52nd search battalion and researchers of the Institute of History of the Academy of Sciences of Belarus worked at the burial site. The conclusion of the Institute of the National Academy of Sciences says that the collected finds (shells, shoes, personal items, coins, buttons, etc.), skulls with gunshot wounds and the method of burial are indirect evidence of mass repression in the territory of the BSSR of the period 1937-1938.

After the completion of all the exploratory and archival research works in the tract, Khaisy might be granted the status of a historical and memorial place. The Vitsebsk organization of the BPF party got such a response to the request from the "regional council of deputies".